A Little Bit Crazy
by SongbirdNoodles
Summary: You ever come on board, have a campaign fling?" A pre-series J/D fic.


**A Little Bit Crazy**

Sam thinks his new assistant is a little bit crazy. It's not that Josh totally disagrees -the hiring-herself thing did pop a bit of a red flag-, but unlike Sam, who's even scared of his own red-headed, totally non-threatening assistant and goes to what Josh considers almost emasculating lengths to avoid talking to Margaret (who, lets face it, does give off a creepy kind of vibe) and Mrs. Landingham, Josh finds doe-eyed, Midwestern Donna not at all intimidating.

Although there's no denying she's a little bit crazy.

For instance, she orders his food based mainly on her own taste. "I don't like wontons," she'll say, looking up at him from the take-out menu with that self-conscious grin he's beginning to understand is her way of telling him he's about to get screwed.

"I do!" He protests, weakly.

She shrugs, softly. "A girl's got to eat, Josh. We're getting egg rolls," she tells CJ Cregg, who's taking down orders because the only decent Chinese place in Charleston gets persnickety when half a dozen orders are placed from the same lowly storefront in a course of fifteen minutes.

"But I wanted wontons," Josh complains. He notices Donna share a conspiratorial grin with CJ, which drives him bezerk because _he's_ supposed to be the one bonding with their new spokesperson, not his assistant.

"They're bad for you," Donna informs him briskly. "Right, and I'm getting Kung Pao, and he wants-"

"Hang on!" He interrupts. "Eggrolls are just as unhealthy as wontons!"

"Not technically," she insists, grinning at him.

"What do you mean, not technically?"

"Well, because if you get the wontons you'll actually eat an entire order of them, wheras if you get the eggrolls, I'll eat half. Which means half the saturated fat and half the calories. So it's better for you."

He shakes his head. "I don't even know how to respond to that."

She nods, satisfied, and leans across him to answer his ringing cell phone. Her arm grazes his for just a second, and though it's nothing, nothing at all, he can't help but notice it.

There's this one time when the Governor's meeting with a family who run a hardware store in Darlington. He's barely concealing his impatience with the way a presidential candidate is expected to mingle with this gzy and his extended family, boiling down his comprehensive and, to Josh, still mind-blowingly expansive plans for keeping the economy on track to how it will benefit the gaggle of people assembled in this meticulously cleaned living room. Donna slides up to and pinches his shoulder, hard.

"Ow!" He hisses in an indignant whisper. "The hell?"

"Try looking a little happier, would you?" She mutters.

"Excuse me?" He snaps back.

"You're looking displeased," she explains. "And you keep looking at your watch. Which makes you look like an elitist and a snob, and that makes your candidate look like one. Especially," she adds surreptitiously, gesticulating toward the Governor who's currently explaining the difference between the per capita GDP and the average national income, "if you do it while he's using words they don't really understand."

He gapes at her. "Do you secretly have a PhD from the Kennedy School?"

She beams at him. "I'm just a fast learner. Oh, and imagining the daughter in a swimsuit might help?"

"Donna!" He hisses.

"What?" She shrugs, studying the redhead sitting on the armrest of her father's chair with supreme indifference. "She's cute."

Josh thinks his head is about to explode. "You're really telling me to mentally undress the Hardware Store girl?"

Donna shrugs. "Just trying to help out."

"Yeah," he mutters. He doesn't mentally undress the Hardware Store girl, of course. Instead, he finds himself unable to keep his eyes of Donna, Donna with her wide eyes and the way she's drinking in the Governor's every word, and the way her woolen sweater has slid up to reveal just a few inches of bare midriff on her hip. He snaps his eyes away from that milky band of skin, thinking to himself, you can't possibly do this, and the expression on her face is so completely wide-eyed farmgirl that any dirty fantasy that might have entered his mind changes direction there and then. She notices his eyes on her, and turns around, a quizzical look on her face,

"Josh? Your face has frozen in a weird way."

He blinks. Smiles at her. "I was just thinking."

"Big shocker," Donna mutters under her breath. He ignores this.

"You get them," he says, quietly. "You… understand them."

"Who?"

"Them." He moves his chin into the direction of the Hardware People and their neighbors, encompassing the homemade quilt on the couch, the folk-arty American flag hanging on the wall. "These people. Small-town America. You get it." She doesn't say anything.

Later, back on the campaign bus:

"It's a _city_, Josh."

"What?"

"Madison. It's _not_ a small town. It's a city, with several hundred thousand inhabitants,"

"That's a lot," he nods, grinning at her.

"Oh, shut up."

He shrugs, thinking privately that Sam was right. She's definitely a little bit crazy.

Though never more so then when she leaves to go back to her old boyfriend.

"You're leaving?" He's wandered out of the upstairs conference room down into the storefront in search of some Fritos, and walks into her, lugging her duffle bag across the darkened room. "No, seriously. You're actually leaving?"

"I'm sorry," she mutters, not looking at him. "But Chris called again, and he wants us to give it another try and-"

"Don't listen to him!" He protests, annoyed. "Are you out of your mind?"

She stops, mid-haul. and her duffle hits the floor with a muted thud. "Stop it."

"Stop what?"

"Don't try and make me stay," she sighs, glaring at him. "I'm sure about this, I really am, and I don't need you messing it up for me."

He walks over to her, picks up the bag. Arguing with her particular brand of logic is useless most of the time, he has learned this much at least in the past three weeks "Here, I'll carry that. It's heavy."

"Thanks." She turns to walk out of the door, but he doesn't bother following.

"Donna, seriously. You shouldn't go." She whips around. Crosses the room in two quick strides, until she's so close to him they're almost touching, and he can tell that breath smells like the Twizzlers she had for dinner, Twizzlers out of a vending machine at the back of a high school auditorium, because she likes listening to the Governor's speeches so much she doesn't dare leave the room when he talks, not even in search for dinner.

"Josh," she says, slowly, deliberately. "I'm sorry I'm going like this, but I _am_ going."

"You shouldn't," he breathes, and he can think of a million reasons why, and none of them have to do with the fact that the world seems to be spinning a little faster the closer she moves towards him, "You're too good at this, you like this too much. You don't belong there anymore. You belong here, now."

She smiles, softly. "You know I don't."

And he realizes she's serious. She really is leaving. She's walking out that door and driving back to Madison to give up her life for the medical advancement of some bozo with a cute smile. And he'll never see her again. Donna Moss, crazy, Midwestern Donna Moss is about to walk out of his life forever.

That's what makes him do it. He cups her neck is his hand and pulls her into a kiss that defies logic and reason and the fact that half the staff are still upstairs, a kiss that isn't about making her stay but about making sure when she walks out of that door, neither of them need to have this particular regret.

It's more than a little bit crazy, what they're doing, kicking her duffle aside, pushing her roughly against a wall, bodies colliding as she buries one hand in his hair and unbuttons his shirt with the other, as he slides one hand under her blouse and his fingers graze more lace than he ever would have pictured her in, though of course, he hasn't been picturing her in her underwear at all, until this moment, this moment where his firmly shut-off subconscious and reality are colliding with the force of two SUVs ramming into each other.

She's still kissing him, hungrily, and then as he deftly pulls her out of her blouse and strokes her breasts, she does this moaning thing that makes him seriously question whether this is seriously happening.

He can't stop himself. It's late and he's tired and sometime tonight she will get into her car and drive the thousand miles to Madison, and her light will recede and, eventually, flicker and die in a dingy kitchen as a gray morning creeps over the Charleston bay. He grips her hips and feels her hands on his ass even as he bends down and kisses those pale breasts he's so strictly forbidden himself to dream about in the past three weeks, one hand grasping for her pants zipper. He pulls the fabric of her panties down and in the silence of the abandoned office around them, her short, staccato breaths as he finds her clit with near-absurd ease sound like war.

They're never going to have this again. Bickering over danishes and splitting lo mein at one AM, and he's not sure if it's because she's so wet and he feels her quickening pulse against his fingers and he won't ever be able to forget what that, or because after this she's going to walk out that door. And then she pulls down his boxers and bores her fingernails into his shoulders and wraps a leg around him, and he's beyond feeling regret, mortification, _anything_ as he thrusts into her, and they both moan at the contact neither of them ever expected.

It's quick and dirty and a total cliché, he's gripping her hips and thrusting insider and she pulls their mouthes closer together than they could ever go, and all it takes is a quick, almost hasty brush of his thumb over her clit and to send her over the edge, and she takes him with him, and there they are, whispering each other's names, both of them more than a little bit crazy.

After what feels like a short eternity, he lets go of her. After a very chaste kiss and a hug that's almost platonic, he steps back. Barely looking at her, he pulls up his pants and closes the few buttons that have come undone. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches her bend over for her blouse_,_ and all he can feel is regret.

She can't stay. Not after this. And, _fuck_, he wants her to.

"I'm sorry," he mutters, before he can stop himself. And he is. A sorry bastard.

She looks up at him with a very brave smile. "Don't be, Josh. This was… good."

He stares at her. "Seriously?"

"What, you want a performance report?"

"No, I mean…" He shrugs. "Okay. Yeah. This was good." He bends over to retrieve her duffle, holds it out to her in a helpless gesture. "Here."

He opens the door, and a gust of cool night air filters in. "Josh."

He turns, and she's looking at him with a very understanding look on her face. "What?"

"At least now we won't have to wonder what could have been, right?"

He exhales, slowly. His shirt smells like her, he realizes. "I guess."

She takes his hand, smiles small. "Walk me to my car?"

He follows, meekly, the duffle bag straps burning into his palm as they walk through the silent streets. They arrive at the parking lot a block down, she unlocks her car and he hoists her bag into her trunk, which is already crowded with small boxes and a fraying suitcase. She opens her car door but doesn't get it, instead leaning against it, creating a metal barrier between them.

"Well," she sighs. "I guess this is good-bye."

"I guess so."

They stare at each other and she starts talking, quickly and pressed like she's saying all the things she's been keeping to herself all night. "I want to thank you for trusting me and giving me this chance and-"

He holds up a hand, and she falls silent. As far as he's concerned, the fact that she's leaving, just _leaving_, is taking that trust he gave her and hurling it into his face, and she she knows it. He takes a deep breath, again, that whiff of her, coming out of his clothes. Already what just happened between them feels like little more than a dirty early-morning fantasy. He pulls his campaign badge out of his pocket. "Keep it. We never got around making you one," he mumbles.

"It doesn't really matter now." But her fingers close around the small plastic card despite that.

"Take it with you," he tells her, gazing at her intently. "To remember what you're worth, okay?"

She nods, and he's not at all surprised to see her eyes suddenly bright. "Okay." She gets into her car. "Bye, Josh."

"Bye."

He turns, and doesn't watch her drive away.

Eight weeks later, he's moodily staring at the rain-sodden Vermont landscape outside, when the distinct feeling he's being watched makes him tear his eyes away from the window. He looks up, and nearly drops the mug of coffee he's holding in surprise.

"Hi." It's Donna. Grinning down at the mess of his desk or maybe the look on his face. "How you been?"

"What on earth…?" He shakes his head, it's a stupid question. "I'm glad your back," he mutters, sheepishly.

She walks over to him. They look at each other. "Yeah?"

"There's a pile of stuff on my desk," he points out, grinning at her, elation taking over his rational brain functions.

"I can see that," she says, slowly. She raises her eyebrows him. "So I'm back in?"

"Absolutely," he says. Only now that she's back and he can already sense a tirade about logical and illogical ways of sorting your memos on the horizon does he realize how much he's missed her, and the fact that she's here, now, makes it unfortunately necessary for him to drop his voice and say, "And Donna, about what happened that night-"

"Let's not," she says, quickly. "I'm back now. I want to work here. Can we just… not?"

"Yeah, okay." He straightens up, takes in her appearance. "What happened to your foot?"

"I slipped on the ice," she admits, blushing. "It's not so bad, I can walk around okay-"

"What'dyou do, go ice-skating? Hockey, maybe?"

She glowers at him. "I was putting out the kitty litter, actually." They grin at each other. "I'll want a badge this time," she informs him, as his phone rings and she picks it up.

"I'll get right on it."


End file.
